Reformation dilemma - What is Faith?

With this Sunday being a celebration of the Reformation across many protestant churches, I thought it might be worthwhile to write something about this, however, the thing I am going to write is not so much about what was great about the Reformation, but what has often become the greatest abuse by heirs of the Reformation heritage, which in itself renders the entire message mute in the church today.

The basic issue is this: if the Reformation had one main battle it was over the issue of justification. That is, what makes us righteous/right before God. The heart of justification is our connection to the life-giving God, particularly in response to a life-taking reality. This is the reality of sin, ours and others'. We kill and we die. We reject good (ultimately we reject the Good One) and we live as under a curse. But perhaps more importantly, it is tied to what happens when we not only live in the good or bad of this world but when we become aware of God, an awareness that wants to please him yet at the same time knows how displeasing we can be, for if our state before each other can be bad, it is dwarfed by the state before God. If justification is ultimately about this reality, about our relation with God and how we stand in not our own righteousness, but the righteousness with God, we can see how serious an issue this really is. How is one declared righteous, particularly when we speak of the righteousness of God?

This is ultimately what the Reformation became about (it was not explicit initially, but later was), and the cry of the Reformers by and large was this: it is faith in Christ alone. For nearly 500 years now has the proclamation of faith alone been a central creed of heirs of the protestant Reformation. However, what really stands to still be discussed, what must be meant by that is what the reformers, Luther especially, truly proclaimed: that faith alone means salvation is Christ's Alone!

Here is the problem: by and large what I see happening, what the temptation for every preacher, teacher, student and believer alike is this: we make faith into the last work. If everyone, perhaps even the Catholic church by and large share the proclamation that we are saved by faith alone, then the real issue is what we mean when we say that. What is faith?

Many will now use James to make faith into a work by quoting "faith without works is dead" thus saying faith looks like this...and then goes on to name everything you must do to be a true believer. Or we introduce phrases like "3rd Use of the Law" (the Law of God specifically to guide the Christian life, Calvin called this the principle use of the law) or "sanctification" so as to now find ways we will make one add something to justification. The first time I encountered this clearly was when I sat in an Evangelical Free Church and the pastor said, "You see, we are justified by faith alone, this means Christ does everything," and I was this close to yelling an "Amen" when he went on, "so now we have sanctification in which we now must follow God's commands or lose our justification." In essence faith is not enough (or faith is defined in a way that Christ is not enough). We must add to what God has done or it was done for naught, this is no different than the medieval notion of "do your best and God will do the rest!" it simply flips from us as the first actor and God the finisher to now Christ as the first actor in our salvation and we do the rest. As if justification is the second chance, faith the final inspiration we need. This must ultimately be done away with to really rescue the radical word of the gospel that we are saved by faith alone.

But what of sanctification? The Bible certainly speaks of it. But we must not make it what must be added to Christ but the fruit of Christ. Until sanctification is taught as passively as justification, and something that cannot be forced and is not the foundation of one's self-understanding of righteousness, until one does away with adding sanctification to justification rather than seeing it as a consequence of justification we will never be free from teaching that one must do something, and the law will be placed front and center with the cross moved to the side. The cross is merely the start of the Christian life instead of the hope and stay of the Christian life. We are now more interested in what we should do, than what Christ does. Ever hear when someone says a preacher is "too evangelistic", and keeps preaching about forgiveness and salvation? We don't need justification anymore...

But the more we wrestle with sin and try to lives pure lives as Christians, the more we can see through this. Saying we no longer need the cross central (we already "know" that) is as if returning to the original sin - we want to be past the true reliance upon God and his Cross, we want justification to simply be a one and done event so we can get on with living as Christians who "do things" whether it is based on how we will purify our outward lives or serve our neighbors or be the model Christian family, none of that is truly what Christianity is about. None of that is ultimately faith itself. No doubt, these things have a place in God's Word and the Christian life. But to be saved by faith alone means that the nature of faith is the center of the Christian life. Gerhard Forde put it best when speaking of sanctification and good works when he called it "getting used to justification". Only in the freedom of faith, only in the vine himself will true branches sprout fruit. Yet how often will we try to preach "how" to bear fruit instead of preaching being grafted into the vine?

Too often, we teach "faith" as something other than living in the branch. This has by and large done unspeakable damage in the church. Not only do our outward accomplishments and signs of salvation/Christian living become more important than the word of the Gospel itself, but the gospel often is silenced so we can hear ourselves and talk about ourselves or the wickedness of others. Faith becomes making your life look like something (usually better than that life - by piety, purity, or prosperity). I'm not a big Bonhoeffer fan, especially of his ethics, but perhaps he understood this better than most, that ethics is as dynamic as life itself and not static because ethics flow from the Christian freedom to be in the living and life-giving Christ. And yet often he is used the opposite, to define faith as a way of living in some form other than from Christ. The "works" language of his own works are used over his Christology (which is so present it's bothersome). We make the consequences of faith into the substance of faith itself. When this happens faith becomes no longer about Christ as Savior (maybe a little bit) but ultimately about Christ as example. This is however precisely what our Reformation heritage ought to reject. Christ must always be Savior before one could ever truly take him as example, and not just in chronology but in importance and place in the Christian faith/life.

The other way we kill our heritage of justification by Faith Alone is not by making faith into a specific practice or condition but by making it an intellectual idea. This is for example something Orthodox Lutheranism truly struggles with. Too often justification is a mere fact. Faith is the act of absorbing and giving ascent to that fact. It is not a living thing at all, it is an idea. When this happens, faith becomes defined not by actions but principles. Sometimes ethical, sometimes doctrinal, but that is all it becomes or it seeks to become something more by teaching faith as doctrine and ethics as practice. The living nature of the Christian to Christ is lost. Confirmation/Profession of Faith becomes merely agreement or proof of the proper knowledge. This is where we need theologians like Giertz who challenge when faith is defined so intellectually that it never is anything else (I don't believe orthodox Lutheranism often intends this, but it becomes the unintentional consequence), making faith to be empty words or ideas. "Grace is not simply a pious word. It is real, just as real as rain or thunder." This is the language often lost in "teaching" faith intellectually. "What was lacking was exactly this mysterious something, that makes faith - Christian faith - in other words, a living fellowship with Christ." The tradition talks a lot about faith alone in Christ alone (although even here the content is often about Christ rather than encountering/giving him, and Christ is rarely discussed in anything more than the past tense), it may even talk and focus on God a lot, but it does so with the assumption that justification happens in "getting it right". Faith is having the right answers. They come much closer, but ultimately still makes faith a work, just an intellectual work. Which will make it an easy work for some, and inaccessible to others.

No, the faith we must recover comes clearest in the words Faith alone in CHRIST alone. Faith must never be about looking like something or doing something, it by nature goes outside of oneself. There are no good words to truly describe it, the best might be relational, an acknowledgement, a trust. All of these however can equally be used to create a work. This is why one must receive the kingdom as a child, where it is beyond all of this, beyond understanding it or being able to do it. It happens to us. Faith must be passive in description if we ever wish to genuinely speak about faith active in love. Faith happens to us. This is also why a big issue is sometimes we preachers get caught up in trying to describe faith which inevitably makes it something we try to produce ourselves (or try to make our life look like we have it). Rather faith is the reality of Christ breaking into our lives as surely as when he was incarnate of the virgin Mary and broke into this old world. It always looks to him, happens by him, proceeds from him. That is to say, we need to be preaching and teaching ultimately what God does in Christ Jesus, because it is only by the work of God that faith comes. Yes there is sanctification and new life, yes there is a freedom which the world does not know, yes there is service and love. But all of these either will be the law by which we try to save ourselves and make ourselves true Christians or the inevitable life that happens the more we find ourselves bound up in Christ.

Then we must also be rid of faith as a choice for Christ. Giving your heart to Jesus...what a gift indeed! Here is the sinner's heart, given to Jesus. That has no value, yet we act as though that will earn the cross (Bo Giertz in Hammer of God puts it better when he states it the opposite, we don't give our hearts to Jesus, he comes and rescues our hearts from the dump). Even if Jesus did it all, I just gotta claim him, name him, make him my Lord. The teaching of Christ doing it all can be added to by making faith into a choice. Luther's Catechism put it so wonderfully "I believe by my own power or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, or come to him. But it is the Holy Spirit who has called me through the Gospel..."

Therefore heirs of the faith alone heritage ought to focus on calling through the Gospel. That means the Gospel preached, not abstractly, but to you. Good Reformation preaching will not try to define faith, for that will often become the means by which we make it into the last work, the final thing we must do to be saved. Instead God's election of you through Christ, the work of Christ, the continued work of Reformation preaching ought to be keeping people in Christ by speaking his words and declaring his works and promises upon our lives. This is the place of the church, it is not merely a place to organize our service or express our faith/praise, it is the place we meet Christ again and again. Preaching justification by faith is neither outdated or only for conversion. Nor is it about making faith look like something, when people call faith right relationship with God what is true there is it speaks that it is about a living experience that comes from encountering the means of grace, the word of God - the places we encounter Christ as a Savior. Every definition of faith then, should really be a confession of faith. That is, every definition is not describing itself but Christ.

If we are saved by faith in Christ, if faith proceeds from Christ and has its very nature tied up in him, then Christ must be the content of preaching. The more that happens the more the question goes from what must I do to what has Christ done. The more this happens the more they are led by the Spirit that would so bind them to Christ. The more this happens the more the life of the Church is not only necessary, for we will know there is where our Lord's word is found, but the life of the church will then grow into discernment on our very lives, as much as a teenager thinks of her high school crush at night or looks for him in the hallways in school. Justification by faith was not a doctrine meant to make preaching and the church about "faith" as a thing but to make Christ truly the Lord and Savior of the church, sovereign, electing and working for our sake constantly. It was about not taking away from his cross or adding to it by making the whole of salvation about anything but him. This includes sanctification, which in his prayer Jesus is clear this is his own work as well (John 17.17, 19), not something we make happen, it too happens from the dynamic truth of Christ coming to our own hearts, and has been promised to us by him. The Formula of Concord on the Third Use of the Law is quite interesting here. It states that this term can only be rightly used when it speaks of the Christian life as Spirit-led and without the compulsion of the law's threats:
But when man is born anew by the Spirit of God, and liberated from the Law, that is, freed from this driver, and is led by the Spirit of Christ, he lives according to the immutable will of God comprised in the Law, and so far as he is born anew, does everything from a free, cheerful spirit; and these are called not properly works of the Law, but works and fruits of the Spirit, or as St. Paul names it, the law of the mind and the Law of Christ. For such men are no more under the Law, but under grace, as St. Paul says, Rom. 8:2 [Rom. 7:23; 1 Cor. 9:21 ].
Perhaps here we can see why St. Paul so regularly tied the imperatives of Christian living to the works of Christ. Christian living, Christian faith, proceeds from one place and that is Christ. Thus the life of the church (and the individual Christian within it) must be found there. Luther understood that when we speak of righteous before God, or more specifically the righteousness of God, that was never something to attain to or claim for oneself - Christian or otherwise, it was something to be given. And the reality of the cross is that is where Christ takes sin and the curse and gives us life and His Righteousness, which is the righteousness of God. The reformation principle of justification, especially by Luther, is grounded in the confession: I the sinner, Christ the justifier. This Reformation Sunday we ought claim it not by teaching faith alone in any manner than preaching Christ, and turning people again and again to him, his work, his cross, his word for us. For the only way we carry the heritage of Justification by Faith alone, is when we truly make that mean in Christ alone.